Sometimes I think of UConn’s women’s basketball program as a giant version of one of those rock-polishing tumblers. You know, where you put stones in with the coarse grit, the fine grit, the pre-polish and the polish as part of the process that makes them look like gems.

That is what’s supposed to happen, anyway. It never worked very well for me. Maybe because 1970s rock-polishing kits for kids were a little on the cheap side. Or maybe I was hit-and-miss about precisely following the directions.

Or maybe I just wasn’t patient enough. You had to run the tumbler for what seemed like forever to me — it might have been only a week — but I would get bored, open it, be disappointed it still contained rocks instead of priceless jewels and then go do something else. It was hard to stay committed to the process.

The SEC once again is the deepest conference in the country. Four teams appear to have Final Four potential. Last season, South Carolina came out of nowhere to win the regular-season championship and now has become the favorite.

What South Carolina’s women’s basketball program is attempting to do is an exhilarating process, but it also usually involves some scar tissue.

In short, the Gamecocks are climbing, and “the top” is a realistic goal. But it is, by no means, a guaranteed destination. And nobody knows that better than the person leading this expedition, coach Dawn Staley.

For the longest time — decades, in fact — there was no question about Tennessee’s identity in women’s basketball. The Lady Vols played aggressive, physical defense that wore down opponents. They were exceptionally motivated to control the boards. They could be a very good offensive team, but they also could survive those games in which they struggled to score.

And, most important of all, they believed at their cores that when the stakes were the highest, they would be the ones walking away from the table with the biggest pile of chips.

Missouri women’s basketball coach Robin Pingeton doesn’t waste much breath talking to her players about the program’s ultimate goals. But it’s obvious what the Tigers crave: a trip to the NCAA Tournament.

Mizzou hasn’t been there since 2006, when Pingeton’s oldest players were in seventh grade.

A crowd waited outside the Joyce Center when the Notre Dame women’s basketball team returned to campus shortly after losing to Connecticut in the national championship game this past April. The loss in Nashville a night earlier marked the Fighting Irish’s first in a calendar year. But Muffet McGraw focused neither on that bitter defeat against an old rival nor on the 37 wins in a row that preceded it when the coach spoke to those who greeted the team.

McGraw wanted to talk about the new season, the one she said started that day. A new opportunity awaited.

Like a lot of us facing a move, Maryland couldn’t bring everything it wanted to a new home in the Big Ten. In the case of the women’s basketball program, it wasn’t a matter of running out of cardboard boxes or a shortage of space in the back of the rental truck. All-American Alyssa Thomas simply didn’t have any eligibility left.

Now the Terrapins hope that moving on without Thomas won’t mean they fit in a little too well in their new surroundings.

June Daugherty has been in this conference for nearly 30 years. The Pac-12’s designated eternal optimist has never sounded more encouraged.

“This conference is going to be better than it’s been in a long time,” said Daugherty, Washington State’s coach. “Let’s stop talking about getting five or six teams in the postseason and talk about eight or nine.”

Charli Turner Thorne, who has banked almost as much Pac-12 time as Daugherty, agrees wholeheartedly.

“On paper, this is the best the conference has ever been,” Arizona State’s coach said. “We were young for a couple of years, but we aren’t young any more. This is exciting. This is what we work for.”

When the season came to a disappointing conclusion though, the loss to also undefeated Connecticut while playing without injured star center Natalie Achonwa, McGraw and her staff did not sit back and say “what if?” As she says on this week’s Dishin & Swishin podcast, the 2014-15 season began the next day.

What a season it could turn out to be the preseason third-ranked Irish! Graduation took McBride, Achonwa, and starting forward Ariel Braker from the team, but a heralded freshman class joins the returning players to give the Irish one of their deepest teams ever.

Duke knows the importance of strong point guard play. After all, it was season-ending injuries to point guards Chelsea Gray and Alexis Jones injury that dashed the Blue Devils’ national title aspirations a year ago.

Just one year later, Duke finds itself in the same position—without Gray, now in the WNBA, and Jones, who transferred to Baylor following her ACL injury. But these Blue Devils are confident that a replacement for the former top-tier point guards lies on this year’s highly-touted roster.

After a strong finish last season and a long off-season, Texas is now the preseason favorite to win the Big 12 conference title for the first time since 2004. The Longhorns have an impressive No. 3 preseason national ranking from SLAM Magazine and are ranked No. 9 by ESPN.

“I’m really, really looking forward to seeing what this team is capable of doing,” head coach Karen Aston said.

Tiffany Bias was the glue that held Oklahoma State together last season. This year, though, the Cowgirls will have to learn to cope without their star point guard. Bias, who led the team in scoring and assists a season ago, is now gone to the WNBA.

“It’s really different,” Roshunda Johnson said. “She was the leader of the team last year. But now that she’s gone we have other people stepping up. We all just come as one and we have to be leaders now that she’s gone. It’s a big factor, but it’s all working together.”

The biggest thing coach Jeff Mittie is looking for in his first year at Kansas State is progress.

The Wildcats are coming off their first back-to-back losing seasons in the Big 12 since 2000 and 2001 and finished with an 11-19 overall mark a year ago.

“I don’t think there has been a winning identity and we are trying to get our team to buy into an offensive identity that is more efficient,” Mittie said. “We do believe that we are going to have to play inside-out basketball with our front line and that is different than they’ve done in the past.”

Mike Carey’s program is at an all-time high. In 2013-14, West Virginia won 30 games, captured a share of its first Big 12 regular-season title and made another NCAA tournament appearance, its fifth in a row and seventh in the past eight years. The Mountaineers open the season ranked No. 17, but face the tall task of replacing five departed seniors — including three of the top four scorers in center Asya Bussie (12.9ppg points per game), guard Christal Caldwell (12.5 ppg) and guard Taylor Palmer (9.8 ppg) — and bringing seven newcomers into the fold. Still, having three starters back this fall should help keep West Virginia at the top of the heap in a competitive Big 12.

Sleep-deprived and feeling a bit down, coach Lindsay Gottlieb took a stroll last March a day after California’s season ended in the NCAA tournament. She was still absorbing being abruptly thrown into the offseason.

Her phone buzzed with a text message. Hall of Fame Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer, whose team was still playing, wrote: “Do you have any scholarships left?”

Let’s address what’s on everyone’s mind: This is the first season in six years that the Stanford’s women’s basketball team has not had an Ogwumike sister on the roster. Yet instead of letting this fact define the upcoming season, the team has instead looked to the very-promising future: to its new offensive scheme, to seeing Amber Orrange and Lili Thompson step up as offensive powerhouses and perhaps most importantly, to see how the freshmen — Kaylee Johnson, Taylor Rooks and Brittany McPhee — will shape the next few years of Cardinal basketball.

Should Stanford reach the NCAA women’s basketball Final Four for the seventh time in eight years, coach Tara Van Derveer may do some serious celebrating. Stanford, which hasn’t won an NCAA title since 1992, lost to eventual champion Connecticut in the semifinals last year.

“It’s really hard to get to the Final Four,” said Van Derveer, in her 29th season. “If I’m talking about that with this team, I’ll buy you a beer and I don’t even drink. This is going to be very challenging. We’re young, but it will be fun to see how much we improve and stay together.”

Entering this season, George Washington women’s basketball head coach Jonathan Tsipis has an advantage that no other coach in the Atlantic 10 can claim: two all-conference forwards who compete against each other every day in practice.

After impressive debuts for both players put them on the conference radar, Caira Washington and Jonquel Jones head into their second seasons together as the starting frontcourt for Tsipis. The two combine to form arguably the best one-two punch in the Atlantic 10, an element that only helps the duo day-in and day-out at practice.